


Preventative Maintenance

by cynthia_arrow (thesilverarrow)



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Because Vipers, Drunk Sex, Drunkenness, F/M, Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 07:04:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3318455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/cynthia_arrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He laughed and said, "Don't you think if I had some sort of burning lust for you I'd've already joined the long line of men who'd airlock themselves if it meant they could get in your pants?"</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"Frak you," she said.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He snorted: "Apparently not."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Preventative Maintenance

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to livejournal many moons ago. I'm simply archiving it here.
> 
> I don't know when this takes place, precisely (probably some vague season two time), but I do know nobody's committing any adultery here. Promise.

He was drunk. That was his excuse. She really had none, but that was just fine with her. Quite frankly, she was kind of glad she could remember things a little better than she would have if she'd been tanked up on ambrosia when she up and decided to jump the Chief's bones.   
  
Galen Tyrol. Thank the gods the he'd sworn off ever checking her viper before CAPs weeks ago (something about her being a colossally bossy bitch about everything) or else she'd have to resist the urge to hang around while he worked, waiting for the opportunity to make him blush. That was damn hard to do, but she figured if anything could make that flustered smile come over his face, it would be mentioning a particular phrase that reminded him of her intimate acquaintance with a certain part of his anatomy.  
  
Then again, he might just roll his eyes at her and go on being the guy he'd always been, so dependable and such a convincing combination of easy-going and controlled that apparently no one bothered to notice that his "bad days," the ones where he went around alternately barking at everyone or keeping his mouth clamped shut, were more than just "bad days." Because when she stumbled upon him, drunk and alone late that night amidst the derelict vipers and raptors in that particularly ill-used corner of the starboard hangar deck, the look on his face was one she'd seen a whole hell of a lot, but usually only in the mirror. It looked like _my life is an absolute waste_. And that kind of thinking wasn't at all a temporary bad mood kind of problem.  
  
He sat on the floor, up against a hulking piece of an old viper shell that had apparently been around so long that it had begun to collect dust. She went and fetched a chair from, dragging it through the maze as he looked on. His dark eyes were doing their best to push against her, keep her away, but his demeanor was so heavy—electric with tension, even if he looked so hollow—that she couldn't have stopped moving toward him if she tried. He could be such a focused guy that when his attention was focused on being antisocial, the energy was palpable enough that it worked against him, drawing people to him. Or maybe it just drew Kara. Intensity didn't bother her in the slightest. If anything, it made her curious.  
  
As she sat down, his eyes drifted away, as if to scan the half-burned out raptor off to their left. But then he swung his gaze back toward her, and it was like she could almost feel it as it lighted on her face and stayed there.  
  
"Go away," he grumbled—conspicuously after he'd watched her drag the chair over.  
  
"No."  
  
He snorted, then he took another drink. "What are you doing awake?"  
  
"Got early CAP. Figured I'd be better off staying up."  
  
"Apollo still hell-bent on punishing you for…I don't know? Being you?"  
  
"Something like that." She was sitting in the chair backwards, straddling it, hanging loose over its back, her arms dangling. "So, why in the hell are you in the morgue, making like Colonel Tigh?"  
  
"Frak you," he said.  
  
"Maybe some other time," she said with a sly grin.  
  
He frowned. "I'm not on duty. Haven't had a day off in frakking weeks, so I'm having one today. If that's okay with you.  _Sir_."  
  
"Frak  _that_  kind of attitude. You know I'm not like that."  
  
He sighed, and he sounded almost too tired to be frustrated. Almost. "What the hell are you doing here?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"Go  _don't know_  it somewhere else, then."  
  
"Don't feel like it."  
  
"I wish I could be like you," he said with a bitter chuckle. "Do whatever the hell I want, nobody saying a frakking word about it."  
  
"Oh, they say plenty. I just don't listen."  
  
She saw his chest heave in silent laughter. Then he said, "You know, most sane people avoid the morgue."  
  
"I don't know why. It's peaceful, less like a morgue, more like a…graveyard or something. 'Cept uglier."  
  
"I think it's frakking depressing."  
  
"Why?"  
  
His put-on cranky diffidence melted away for a moment, and he gestured at her with the bottle in his hand. "Because every time we lose a viper or a raptor, it's gone. We don't have any shiny new ones waiting in the wings. I keep all this shit"—he opened his arms wide, gesturing—"because it makes me feel like I might be able to fix something someday."  
  
"No. You keep it around so you can be guilty about it, even though us frakking up your fliers isn't your fault. You genuinely enjoy being able to piss and moan about it."  
  
"I don't piss and moan."  
  
"No. You do so much to avoid it that you snap at everyone until even Cally's afraid to talk to you."  
  
He leaned his head back against the metal, closing his eyes. "You don't know what it's like being in the position I'm in. We never get a moment's peace, and we take so much shit from everybody, but there's no way around it. I know that. They know that. But they'd all just as soon give up as push on through a double, triple shift. If I bark, it's because they bellyache."  
  
"You're right. I have no idea what it's like to be you. But I do know that life sucks for everybody on Galactica. You just have to remember that at least we're not dead."  
  
"How inspirational," he muttered.  
  
"That's me. All about the motivation. You know, this shit"—she gestured at the bottle—"isn't going to do you a damn bit of good. Not if you drink so much of it you spend your whole day off puking and nursing a wicked headache."  
  
"So what do you suggest?"  
  
"For…?"  
  
"If I'm not allowed to get wasted…"  
  
"Too late. You're already there."  
  
"Well, if I'm not allowed to  _stay_  wasted, and you think it's so frakking  _unhealthy_  for me to sit around in the morgue, what in the frak do you suggest I do?"  
  
"Get laid."  
  
He rolled his eyes and frowned.  
  
"I'm serious," she said. "You're too tense. You need a good frak or something."  
  
"Is that an offer?" he replied, jaw set and eyes warming, focused in on hers.  
  
"What?" She narrowed her eyes to avoid letting them pop open wide.  
  
He laughed sardonically. "I was just frakking with you, Starbuck."  
  
"No, you weren't."  
  
He tried to hide all sorts of things with a closed-off, half-apathetic frown. It was really pretty unnecessary, because she wouldn't have been able to read his expression anyway, not now, with the idea of frakking him digging into her brain. She wasn't exactly in the habit of thinking about Tyrol that way. Not that she'd  _never_  given it any thought…  
  
He laughed and said, "Don't you think if I had some sort of burning lust for you I'd've already joined the long line of men who'd airlock themselves if it meant they could get in your pants?"  
  
"Frak you," she said.  
  
He snorted: "Apparently not."   
  
His expression warmed into a lazy smile, but his eyes were still the same—dark and pulling and focused, now with a mixture of mischief and sarcasm and something she might've called desire, if that wasn't crazy. It was crazy, right?  
  
He'd set the bottle down beside him, and his arms were draped over his bent knees. He chuckled and knocked his head back against the metal behind him. Then he rubbed his hand over his jaw, scratching at the stubble there. He looked at her from under hooded eyes, and for no good reason he refused to look away. It was actually kind of…charming?  
  
But she played it causal, grinning and saying, "You're wasted. I doubt as if you could even get it up."  
  
But his face was not at all casual. "Try me," he said evenly, picking up the bottle and taking a slow swallow, his eyes never leaving hers. In fact, she got the impression he was daring her to do it. Who knew why, but he had decided he wanted to see if he could get a reaction out of her, and it was damn well working.  
  
So she decided she might as well get a reaction out of him, too. She tipped herself off the chair and came and crouched in front of him.  
  
"You know," she said, still smiling, "smug looks good on you."  
  
"Does it?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Starbuck?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"You gonna frak me or just keep talking?"  
  
He was this short of laughing, but only in an amused, playful way. He didn't laugh, though, because his eyes were still saying such serious things.  
  
He let his legs fall and she settled herself in place, straddling his hips, her mouth connecting with his before he could utter a word of protest. His hands came up and cradled her neck, holding her in the kiss as he immediately took over, plunging his tongue deep into her mouth. He tasted like ambrosia, sweet and familiar, and she just relaxed herself into it, content to enjoy the way he was kissing her the way his tongue traced a path around the inside of her mouth, like he was learning her.   
  
And she was learning him. She let all her weight fall against him, pressing herself down and into his body. Sure, he wasn't as cut as somebody like Lee or Helo, who had more reasons and opportunity to work off the kind of pudge that most men always seemed to have around their midsections. But she didn't mind that in the slightest. Besides, he was pretty frakking strong, plenty of muscle, and as he pulled at her with his hands, his grip was firm, sure, just like she expected of the best frakking mechanic on the ship.  
  
They didn't break from the kiss to teasingly chatter at each other, not as he pulled her tighter and tighter and she found her hips grinding desperately into his. Apparently, she'd needed a good frak, too. Only when she found it hard to breathe, the both of them nearly grunting and panting into each other's mouths, did she break the kiss and clutch at him, still rutting herself against his erection as she laughed nervously over his shoulder.  
  
"Gods," she said breathlessly.   
  
"You sure about this?"  
  
"Frak, no. But we're gonna do it anyway."  
  
His hand on the back of her neck rubbed in circles, comforting and friendly, even as his hips strained up off the floor. "How?"  
  
"Chair," she said, launching herself off his lap before either one of them could think twice.  
  
As she slipped off her boots and pants, he pushed himself up off the floor and planted himself in the chair, already fumbling to get out of the top half of his jumpsuit. She watched with amusement as he looked up and down her body, over her tanks and down to her panties and her bare legs. He smiled a bewildered smile, tinged with the same kind of desperation she could feel tightening her whole body. It was so bizarre, the mix of sudden need and utter astonishment of it being the frakkin' Chief she was about to straddle again, as she pulled her panties to the side and sank down over him.  
  
He slipped inside her so easily, deep from the start, and she didn't move for a moment, just looked at his face and exchanged an amused smile with him.  
  
"Frak, Kara," he gasped. "Gods, move."  
  
So she did. His hands on her hips did a lot of the work, but she also held to his shoulders, using him as leverage to pull up and almost off his before she thrust back down again. She suddenly felt too warm, and her hands slipped over his neck and his thighs slipped against hers. She closed her eyes and clung to him, just listening to the sound of his breathing and grunting beneath her, taking in the usual scent of the hangar deck mixed with alcohol and sex, with his body and hers.  
  
She hadn't expected to come like this, and she didn't. He groaned—maybe a little too loudly—when he suddenly came inside her, and she kept thrusting over him until he reached up with one hand to pull her face down so he could look in her eyes. She let him slip out of her, but he didn't let her get up. Instead, he thrust his hand between them and sought out her clit, rubbing at it until he felt her leaning into him, just to get that constant pressure she needed. He pressed his thumb into her clit hard as she got herself off, coming silently, her jaw held tight to a cry that really would have brought the other deckhands running.  
  
For just a second, she collapsed against him. "Frak," she sighed. "Oh, gods, that was… Thanks."  
  
He giggled. "You were right, I think."  
  
"If you only  _think_ , I'm losing my touch."  
  
He angled her face into a quick, hard kiss. "You were definitely right, Starbuck."  
  
She stood up, finally, saying, "Damn straight."  
  
As he righted his jumpsuit, she pulled her pants back on, leaving her boots in her hands.  
  
She said, "And now, I'll gladly leave you to moping in the morgue. If you want."  
  
He blinked at her with bleary eyes. "Nah. I think I'm gonna go crash."  
  
"Don't sleep all day. Not if you wanna enjoy not working."  
  
"Frak that. If I'm awake, I'll just end up back down here. I honestly don't know what in the hell I'd do with myself if I wasn't working."  
  
"I hear there's a shuttle of marines and civvies going over to the Cloud Nine for preventative maintenance on the air circulation systems. I'm sure the Commander would be glad to have the CPO looking in on the operations. Just for educational purposes."  
  
He smiled as she tapped the boots in her hand against his leg before she wound her way out of the morgue.  
  
"Is that what that was?" he called out. "Preventative maintenance?"  
  
Her cackle echoed through the whole deck as she walked away, wide awake and ready for the morning CAP. 


End file.
